[URBAN NOTE] "Riding through pedestrian crosswalk lands Toronto cyclist in hospital"

[rfmcdonald]

I'd seen the Facebook photo campaign of the bike accident victim requesting witnesses before I came across Marco Chown's Toronto Star article. It takes so little time to go from unmitigated sympathy for someone who went through a traumatic accident to being upset that the accident victim caused her own accident and didn't seem to recognize her responsibility for that. It's incidents like this which give cyclists a bad name.

The little red hand was flashing, but Lara Bastien thought she still had enough time to hop on her bike and pedal across the pedestrian crosswalk at the busy downtown intersection.

At the same time, a tractor trailer started to turn right and its 18 wheels met Bastien’s two with gory results.

[. . .]

Bastien, who is an artist that goes by the name of Fox Xoft, decided to put up flyers asking for witnesses to come forward and it just seemed natural to put it up on Facebook as well. Her call for help has been shared almost 3,000 times on the social network.

“Luckily, Toronto Western has Wi-Fi,” she said.

She didn’t immediately speak with an investigating officer but police did in fact interview witnesses from the crash. An officer eventually called to fill in Bastien, adding that the driver won’t face charges.

“They said the case was closed because I shouldn’t have been biking in the pedestrian crosswalk,” Bastien said.